Why Morgan Harrington's case is getting attention

Every day, nearly 2,500 missing-persons reports are filed across the United States.

Few of those reports receive any media attention. Yet the disappearance of Virginia Tech student Morgan Dana Harrington went from local newspaper and television stations to cable television's "Nancy Grace" in 48 hours.

According to some television and digital journalism experts, Harrington's case skyrocketed because of a confluence of circumstances including her connection to the site of the largest mass school shooting in U.S. history.

Those experts say that the disappearance of the 20-year-old from Roanoke County made national news because:

-- Harrington is a young, pretty, blue-eyed woman, not unlike other missing females whose disappearances have received widespread media coverage in recent years.

-- The fact that she disappeared from a Metallica concert in Charlottesville on Saturday lends a national element to the story. Metallica, one of the most popular heavy metal rock bands of all time, featured a posting on its Web site headlined "One Of Our Fans Is Missing."

-- Social networking Web sites such as Facebook and Twitter spread the news quickly among users nationwide.

-- Harrington is a student at Virginia Tech, a place that many Americans still associate with the mass shootings of April 16, 2007.

The Virginia Tech connection may be as important as any factor in making Harrington's disappearance national news, said Robert Thompson, one of the country's most-respected media experts and the founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University.

"Part of this is when you think 'Virginia Tech,' it carries certain sacred overtones to the country," Thompson said. "Not only do you have a young college student in danger, but when you attach the words 'Virginia Tech' ... Virginia Tech is one of those sets of words like '9/11' and 'Oklahoma City.' It means more than just the college name.

"The whole country has strong sympathy and empathy for the university. It's still recent in their minds, the last big national story to happen there."

Claudette Artwick, an associate professor of broadcast and digital journalism at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, agrees that Harrington's looks and her connection to Tech probably have contributed to the national media's interest. However, the Internet also has played a huge role in making the story too big to ignore, she said.

"Social media are a huge part of young people's lives," Artwick said. "Everybody's tweeting about it, not only people who know her. Who's the reporter and who's the source anymore?"

The Associated Press story about Harrington's disappearance, which included a photograph, was picked up by most major newspaper and television Web sites Wednesday. Harrington's disappearance was among the top five most-viewed stories on CNN.com's Web site for much of the day.

Artwick also notes that Harrington's parents, Dan and Gil Harrington, were quick to reach out to national media to draw attention to their daughter's disappearance and to ask for help finding her. Gil Harrington was interviewed by telephone on HLN's "Nancy Grace" on Tuesday. Grace, a former special prosecutor from Georgia, covers legal issues and crime on her show, HLN's top-rated program.

In a video clip posted on the CNN.com Web site, Grace described Morgan Harrington as "beautiful on the inside as well as the outside. She looks like a fairy princess." While speaking to Gil Harrington, Grace choked up when she spoke of her own young daughter and the thought of someone "making off with her."

Grace's show, as well as other cable news programs, have been criticized for past excessive coverage of missing white females who are young and pretty, but not covering disappearances of minority women or missing men. TV and social critics have referred to such coverage as "Missing White Woman Syndrome."

However, several law enforcement agencies have credited shows such as "Nancy Grace" for keeping missing-person cases in the news and for helping them solve some cases.

Plus, as Thompson said, the disappearance of a young person "is every parent's worst nightmare," regardless of race or sex.

The National Center for Missing Adults, a nonprofit organization that acts as a clearinghouse for information about missing adults, reports that nearly 2,500 missing-persons reports are filed every day. The FBI's National Crime Information Center reported 102,764 active missing-person records at the end of 2008.

When a story makes the national news, you can expect it to be covered for a while, Thompson said.

As the parent of a young woman in her early 20's, I've been following the case of this missing student, particularly since the story is local to me. I cannot express the outrage I feel that this reporter has to inject race into this family's tragedy. I could see someone from a newspaper outside of the area writing such an opinion piece, but this person is employed by the Roanoke (Virginia) Times.

>They think the are the New York Times. But they’re not.<

They are far, far more liberal than are the residents in the part of Virginia they cover, that’s for sure.

This young woman’s purse and cell phone were found in a parking lot near the concert she had attended. Please keep her and her parents in your prayers.

As memory serves..serial rapists and mass murderers seem to prefer smallish blonde girls. Nothing against the rest, but they seem to be a target more often.
That was what made me a little more alarmed.
Still praying for her and her parents..or for any other missing kid.

I read an article on this subject several years ago. The writer felt that part of the tendency to focus on the ‘white woman cases’ is that white families tend to be more proactive when someone goes missing. They contact the media, they do their own fliers and post them everywhere, they will organize groups and searches and volunteers. They will make umpteen calls until they some distant contact to someone’s uncle’s cousins’ coworker that can get a story on the news or in a paper. Black families tend to have a sit back and wait approach, a more fatalistic view of the whole situation and wait for the police to ‘do their job’. (Note, this is not my opinion, I don’t know whether it’s factual or not.)

I also read in the same article of several young black women who disappeared and the cops were pretty certain the boyfriends murdered her but simply couldn’t get enough evidence to get an arrest, all they have is that she simply disappeared with him being the last one she was with, nothing else. They already know who probably did it, but they don’t have a body and they don’t have bloody clothes or a weapon or a chain of cell phone calls to follow. After awhile, they become cold cases, just like this one will eventually, if she isn’t found.

My heart goes out to the parents, any parents. I can’t imagine the agony of having a child missing.

“I read an article on this subject several years ago. The writer felt that part of the tendency to focus on the ‘white woman cases’ is that white families tend to be more proactive when someone goes missing. They contact the media, they do their own fliers and post them everywhere, they will organize groups and searches and volunteers. They will make umpteen calls until they some distant contact to someone’s uncle’s cousins’ coworker that can get a story on the news or in a paper.”

In today’s world, social networking links us together nationwide and globally. Morgan’s plight is all over the internet through Facebook and Twitter, among others. National news outlets have their ear to these sources and therefore are quick to pick up a story.

Then, as the reporter mentions in this article, there is the Virginia Tech angle to this disappearance. I think it has a huge effect in this particular case.

The above reasons for the spread of Morgan’s story highlight how inappropriate this reporter is to insert race, of all things, into this situation.

Maybe it’s because the girl’s mom dressed her like a hooker to go to a concert of band who sings these lyrics:

Hey hey I’ve got somethin to say
I raped your mother today...

Hey hey I’ve got somethin to say
I killed your baby today...

It’s a wonder more girls don’t go missing at these disgusting places.

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